Sunday, January 30, 2011

Another Medevac

We had another medevac this week. That's already 3 since I've been here in two months. It's a good thing that Midway is here for all the people who get sick or injured in the middle of the ocean.

The group from Duke left last night, so it'll be kind of quiet around here for a month or so until the next group of visitors get here. If you haven't checked out their blog yet, look at the link in my post from last week. There's not a lot of other news around here, other than our short-tailed albatross chick is getting pretty big now. I don't have any pictures of it this week, but we've been using our remote camera to check up on it. No more big storms, but it has been cool and windy. Most people here have been calling it cold, but for someone who grew up in North Dakota, low 60's don't count as cold.

I built up a lot of vacation time on Tern Island so I'll be going on vacation next week for a month or so. I'll post a blog for next week though.

This is the fishing boat that dropped off the medevac patient.

Here's a Black-footed albatross and its chick.

Here's a pretty young Laysan albatross chick.

This chick was getting fed by both parents.

Sorry for the over exposure. The Duke students and volunteers were out filling sinkholes that formed when parts of the island got washed over during the big storm.

No story with this picture. It's just the old Harbor Office.

This picture is a few weeks old, but this is Sara, Nicole, Emily and Dasha, reading the bands in our albatross plots. This is about a 7 week project, to see how many of our adult albatrosses come back each year to breed.

The canaries like this tree, so do the mynah birds. It is a Tiger's claw or Coral tree.

About Me

After high school I went into the Navy doing nuclear power stuff on a submarine. After 6 years, I left the Navy then got my biology degree from Montana State Univ. I then worked for the USDA doing human nutrition research for 8 years. I also got my Master's Degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of North Dakota. While doing that I worked for Mr. Ellie Pooh selling elephant dung paper (google it) to help the Sri Lanka elephants. After that, I did the only logical thing with my MS and moved to Cleveland, OH and got a job in security at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It was great, for a while, but I found a 1 year temporary job at Midway Atoll with the US Fish & Wildlife Service. I loved it so much that I moved to an even smaller island with only 4-15 people (Tern Island). After being the Asst Manager, then the Manager, I got the chance to go back to Midway as the Wildlife Biologist for a few more years. Just so you know, I didn't write this as an employee, I just commented about my days here and put up some photos, so these aren't the views of the FWS. I still do ocean work for the FWS, but I do it from the Headquarters office in the Washington D.C. area.